Marines awards sole-source contract to support IT restructure

Oct. 7, 2013 - 06:31PM
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Despite the partial government shutdown, the Marine Corps appears to be moving forward with plans to revamp its information technology management practices.

The Marine Corps Logistics Command announced Monday it awarded a sole-source contract to Gartner on Oct. 1 to help carry out IT organizational, governance, process and portfolio management changes, according to a notice on FedBizOpps.gov. Work under the year-long, $1 million follow-on contract was slated to start Sept. 28 and will extend the company’s ongoing work.

“The significant DoD budget pressures have increased the urgency of implementing these changes in order to adapt to the new fiscal environment,” according to the justification notice, which made the case that Gartner is the only company qualified to carry out the work. One reason is that most of the technical data required to implement the new IT changes were developed by Gartner under an earlier contract and are considered company property.

It isn’t clear when Gartner’s original contract was awarded, but it also was closed to competition from other companies.

The Marine Corps Logistics Command has been working with Gartner over the past three years to understand the service’s existing IT infrastructure, skills competencies and processes. Particularly, Gartner was selected to carry out the Marine Corps’ so-called IT organization design support engagement. The goal is to develop:

■ A strategy for the Logistics Capabilities Center (LCC) and C4 (command, control, communications and computers) IT functions.

■ A formal IT governance structure for the directorates.

■ Roles and responsibilities of key personnel involved in those IT governance areas.

The Marine Corps said it has spent $1.3 million over the past three years to identify the IT roles of its C4 and LCC directorates.